Research Items

Abstract

STONE IMPLEMENTS FROM NIGERIA.—The Geological Survey of Nigeria has issued as Occasional Paper No. 4 a communication by Mr. H. J. Braunholtz, describing a number of stone implements of palæolithic and neolithic types found in the alluvium of the Bauchi Plateau. Their discovery is a by-product of the tin-mining industry, which necessitates removing and sifting large quantities of alluvial deposit in river valleys. The depth at which they are found varies from a few feet to 30 feet. Unfortunately this affords no criterion of age, and further, the exact location of the finds has not always been recorded. In some cases, however, the depth and situation taken together seem to argue a considerable antiquity such as, e.g.,, a site “under 20 feet of alluvial and 85 yards from the recent river edge.” The implements are, with one possible exception, of local rock and of local manufacture. The palæolithic implements are made of a quartz porphyry, the neolithic of basalt (dolerite). Many of the former are much rolled. Allowing for differences due to the employment of a different material, the palæolithic implements resemble western European types of the Chelles to Le Moustier epochs, but not of the later palaeolithic times. While the neolithic types are widely distributed in Nigeria, the Bauchi Plateau is the only site in the provinces up to the present on which palaeolithic implements have been found. The absence of late palaeolithic forms suggests either an isolation of Nigeria from ultra-Saharan Africa at this period, or lack of stone suitable for finer flaking, or, possibly, a more recent origin than their typological affinities in North Africa and Europe.